


But oh, let's go a-roving

by Lobelia321



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 12:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14933897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobelia321/pseuds/Lobelia321
Summary: Tristram discovers cows, a Land Rover and a misprision of a memory.





	But oh, let's go a-roving

But oh, let's go a-roving  
by Lobelia

It was the day after the Necton Annual Country Fayre. Tristram Albuquerque stalked along the sun-dried periphery of the upper meadow in a reminiscent wet dream when a black panther twisted his guts.

It was a sound. From behind the hawthorn hedge. A revving, coughing, raw sound. An ugly sound. A sound that went straight into his viscera.

Tristram clutched his straw hat, gripped his cane and strode up the incline on his stork-long legs.

On the other side of the declivity, there was an extraordinary sight. 

It was a crowd of cows, nearly all of the Albuquerque Red Poll herd. They stood around, eyes bulging, jaws chewing cud, tails swishing, shit dropping. They were being bovine and stolid. They were not moving out of the way of the green vehicle in the midst of them, revving its engine in an effort to shoo them off.

Tristram was no expert with motor vehicles. He was more of a bicycle and punt chap. Preferred the soft sigh of the wind in the willows to the bluster and bother of a Mister Toad. But this. This was something else. The car appeared to be some sort of jeep, nothing like the sleek grey things that stood about in the game keeper's garage. A green jeep, scruffy, shiny, with muddy wheels and mirrors on sticks and canvas flapping off its roof.

Tristram closed his eyes and there it was again: the chthonic growling, the visceral torque. A demon of an engine.

"Hey," yelled a voice over the noise.

Tristram snapped to.

"Excuse me? Could you, um something something."

"What?" Tristram cupped a hand to an ear.

A key turned. The jeep juddered; the motor died. Tristram screwed up his eyes behind his sunglasses. Out of the driver's cabin leaped a vision.

It was a woman, with raggedy-cropped hair, shirt undone to the third button, hiking boots and short, short denim shorts. "Sorry," she said. "She's kind of loud, I know."

And now that Tristram could hear her properly, shivers hurried up and down his spine. He took off his glasses, and now that he could see her properly, he blushed from the tips of his toes to the tops of his ears.

"Sorry to bother you. It's these cows." She stomped through dung and stubble. She waved at the Polls with freckled, square-nailed hands. Tristram felt faint. "Shoo," she cried. She leant across the bonnet of her car, denim-clad arse in the air, tanned legs on tip toes, arms windmilling. "Move! Shoo!" Then she turned around. "Could you maybe help me, sorry to ask but-- Oh."

Tristram crammed the sunshades back onto his nose but, of course, she recognised him.

"Oh, it's _you_." And a slow smile spread across her freckled face.

For this woman was him. Absolutely him. She was the fellow from last night. From the fayre. The young coltish lad, in the baggy stripy top and the sailor's cap, jaunty thighs in wide-legged trousers, and a freckled nose. Short-cropped hair, smoky voice. Who had efficiently and curtly brought him off behind the Best County Marmalade tent. And who, clearly and obviously, was not a fellow at all.

She grinned. He. She. "How are you doing?"

"I," croaked Tristram. He coughed. "Very well, thank you."

"That's good." She leaned back on the strangely square green bonnet of her car. Her breasts swelled under her shirt. How could he not have noticed them last night? To be fair, her top had been very baggy and his brain very addled and full of cheap ale. And his cock had been lost to lust and his eyes possibly half-closed, plus wearing sunglasses at night in an unlit nook was painfully clearly not conducive to twenty/twenty vision.

"Good." She nodded. "That's good." A long cool look. And then, "How do you like her?" She slapped the bonnet behind her.

"Her?"

"Yeah, my Land Rover. I call her Molly." 

"A what, a Land Rover, is it?" Tristram's head felt soaked with ether.

"Series Two," she declared. Her voice dropped an octave. "Pastel green, the correct colour for 1962; even on the wheels." She was actually stroking the chassis now. With her freckled hand. "Sand canvas top. I completely stripped her down last winter and built her up again. Modified bulkhead, mating to the gearbox, cut-down crank, full nut-and-bolt restoration, the lot. Isn't she a beauty?"

"I." Tristram licked his lips and tried to think of England. He had no idea of what any of that meant. "It's a... Nice sound. Yes, a nice, ah, engine sound."

Her grin split her face in two. "You like that, do you? Isn't it the best? Rorty V8. Huge pain to get right, trouble with converting the throttle cable, radiator broke down twice, but worth it, no, totally worth it." She straightened up. "Listen, help me move these cows out of the way and I'll give you a spin."

Tristram looked at the Poll. "Yes, of course. Certainly." He took a cautious step towards the herd and brandished his cane. "Off you run. Go on, skedaddle." The cows turned stupid eyes on him and moved not one hoof's breadth. He poked one in the rump. "Considering they are actually," he ventured, "my cows, I don't seem to, I don't know, be able to. Ah, move them."

"Your cows? These are your cows?"

"Yes, well. I own the land so I suppose I own the cows on the land. They kind of, ah, came with the whole package. I don't manage them," he hastened to add. "Herd them. Or whatever you do. I have a man for that."

"A man?" she said and laughed.

"Yes. A..." And he blushed again. Did she know? He? His fatal mistake? Did she now think that perhaps they might take things up where they had left off? 

"They don't seem to be moving," she said.

"No. They're not, are they? We should perhaps, ah, just leave them. Lest they trample us or somesuch. It isn't unheard of. I mean," he finished lamely, "they'll go away at some point."

"Will they?" She peered at him. "Good to know." That slow smile again. It had seemed so boyish the night before. Feral. With pointy canines and a dip in the lip. "We could wait in Molly." She gestured with her head. "It's quite roomy. Look, three seats in a row. Elephant hide."

"Indeed?" Tristram cleared his throat. A tense lurch jolted his stomach.

"Here, jump up." She opened the door. The seats were alarmingly high. He used his cane for leverage. She scrambled in past him, over him, across him, pressing up against him, and then she was next to him, behind the wheel, freckled hand on the seat between them.

Her eyes glanced down at his flies. 

His nape flushed with heat.

She looked out at the herd and smiled. "So, Mister Cow Owner," she said.

"Tristram," he supplied. "We, ah." He cleared his throat. "I suppose we never properly introduced, I mean..." He faltered.

"No," she said, and suddenly her hand was on his thigh. "No, we didn't."

"I." He licked his lips. "I should tell you something. Haha. Awfully embarrassing. I normally never, and last night, the beer, I'm not really habituated, but, well, I thought, I took you for--"

"A boy?" she said.

He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

"Don't worry," she said. "Happens to me a lot." And flashed those pointy canines at him. Her hand was warm and firm on his linen trousers.

"I don't usually," he managed, "go with, you know. With girls. Women."

She leaned closer. Her breath was hot against the side of his neck. His balls felt tight and full.

"Don't worry," she murmured against his skin as her hand slipped further upward. "And I don't usually go with men myself." 

~~~

The End.  
© Lobelia

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for Bootsmeister.


End file.
